Friday, March 03, 2017

Keswick's Unintelligibility #2 & Summary: in Keswick's Errors--an Analysis and Critique of So Great Salvation by Stephen Barabas, part 17 of 17

Further
illuminating the tension between Keswick’s attempt to affirm both its standard
model of sanctification and classical orthodoxy, Barabas states:“Much is made by Keswick of sanctification as
a crisis.It is true, Keswick says, that
sanctification invariably begins at regeneration.There can be no question about this.On the other hand, many Christians do not
make the progress in sanctification that they should. . . . For this reason
real progress is often not made until they come to a spiritual crisis.”[1]Affirming that sanctification invariably
begins at regeneration is certainly Scriptural.For that matter, declaring that many Christians do not grow as much as
they should could only be improved by stating that no Christian grows as much
as he really ought to.Keswick is to be
applauded for affirming with the Scriptures and historic Baptist doctrine that
sanctification begins with regeneration, but the nature of this pre-crisis
sanctification is difficult to determine on characteristic Keswick theological
presuppositions.Furthermore, if “real
progress” fails only “often” to take place without a crisis, then sometimes
“real progress” does, in fact, occur without a crisis.If Barabas means what he says, then Keswick
concedes that sanctification always begins at justification and that believers
can grow in a great way without ever having a post-conversion crisis experience
of the sort that the Convention emphasizes.

What, then,
becomes of the Keswick criticism of those who, affirming the certainty of
sanctification for all the regenerate with no Keswick crisis is required, allegedly
believe that growth is “automatic”?[2]How can Keswick unite its concession to the
clear teaching of the Bible that no post-conversion crisis is necessary with
its typical doctrine that “sanctification is a process beginning with a
crisis”?[3]How can sanctification both begin at
regeneration, and yet not begin until one experiences a crisis sometime after
regeneration?The tension between these
positions is unmistakable in Barabas’s successive quotations from Evan Hopkins
and Andrew Murray.Hopkins
affirmed:“No one . . . can be really
trusting Christ to save him from the penalty of sin who is not as sincerely
desiring to be saved from its power. . . . The essence of conversion is the turning
away from sin unto God.The soul that
truly receives forgiveness is set also upon holiness.”Murray stated:“[V]ery many Christians at conversion . . .
never think of saying that they are no more going to have their own will . . .
there is real need [therefore, after conversion], to put one’s whole life under
the management of Jesus.”[4]Barabas states later that “so many . . .
Christians . . . have never faced a crisis in their lives—a crisis involving
who will be the master of their lives:they themselves, or Christ,”[5]
and that “not many . . . Christians . . . know what is meant by [Christ’s]
lordship over their lives.”[6]How is it possible that someone can turn from
sin, desiring to be saved from its power and become holy, as Hopkins said was
necessary, while not even thinking about renoouncing self-will, without putting
his life under the management of Christ, and without deciding who will be the
master of his life, as Murray affirms is common?Is this another instance where Keswick’s lack
of “carefully prepared, weighty discourses of a theological nature”[7]
places its system in at least apparent contradiction, so that a demonstration
of how such affirmations can be reconciled is required, but lacking?Or is the fact of the matter rather that the
Keswick theology is truly contradictory,[8]
caught between the teaching of Scripture that all who are justified are also
changed and the development of its system from its historical roots in the
Broadlands Conference and in Higher Life ideas that dilute the power of
regeneration to exalt a post-conversion crisis at which alone sanctification is
initiated?The Keswick doctrine of
sanctification as process is both underemphasized and unintelligible.[9]

Keswick theology
rightly exalts the Lord Jesus Christ, His power to sanctify sinners, and the
necessity of faith in the Christian life.Its call to immediate surrender to God and the renunciation of sin are
Scriptural, as are its emphasis upon union with Christ, the power of the Holy
Spirit, prayer, and evangelism.However,
while these aspects of the Keswick theology are Biblical, refreshing, and key
to an increase in spiritual life, they are not unique to Keswick, as vast
numbers of Christians who reject Keswick theology embrace them also.On the other hand, the problems in the
Keswick theology are severe.Because of
its corrupt roots, Keswick seriously errs in many ways:1.) in its ecumenical tendencies, 2.) in its theological
shallowness or even incomprehensibility, 3.) in its neglect of the role of the
Word of God in sanctification, 4.) in its shallow views of sin and
perfectionism, 5.) in its support of some tenants of Pelagianism and
semi-Pelagianism, 6.) in its improper divorce of justification and
sanctification, 7.) in its confusion about the nature of saving repentance, 8.)
in its denial that God’s sanctifying grace always frees Christians from bondage
to sin and changes them, 9.) in its failure to warn strongly about the
possibility of those who are professedly Christians being unregenerate, 10.) in
its support for an unbiblical pneumatology, 11.) in its belief in the
continuation of the sign gifts, 12.) in its maintainance of significant
exegetical errors, 13.) in its distortion of the positions and critiques of
opponents of the errors of Keswick, 14.) in its misrepresention of the nature
of faith in sanctification, 15.) in its support for a kind of Quietism, and 16.)
in its denial that God actually renews the nature of the believer to make him
more personally holy.Thus, Keswick
theology differs in important ways from the Biblical doctrine of
sanctification.It should be rejected.

[A] believer’s progress in
sanctification must therefore be determined in no small degree by his readiness
to obey the commands of Christ. It is not, then, surprising that some are far
in advance of others . . . growth is not uniform through all the periods of
Christian life. . . . [There are] times, therefore, when growth seems to be
arrested . . . [and] also times of manifest and rapid advance . . . and these
times would be far more frequent if Christians were more given to prayer and
labor. (pgs. 135-137, Doctrine of the
Higher Christian Life Compared With the Teaching of the Holy Scriptures,
Alvah Hovey)

For that matter, the classic
evangelical Protestant doctrine of sanctification likewise denies that
sanctification is “automatic.”While
there may be someone on earth who believes that sanctification is in truth
automatic, if Keswick represents its opponents as advocates of an automatic
sanctification, it misrepresents the overwhelming majority of them.

[3]Pg. 110, So Great
Salvation, Barabas.

[4]Pg. 112, So
Great Salvation, Barabas, quoting Hopkins from The Life of Faith, August 1890, pg. 141, and Murray from What Full Surrender Means, pg. 9.

[5]Pg. 124, So Great
Salvation, Barabas.

[6]Pg. 143, So Great
Salvation, Barabas.

[7]Pg. 51, So Great
Salvation, Barabas.

[8]Barabas is not alone in setting forth the contradictory
character of the Keswick doctrine of sanctification as process.Althouse notes:“Thus, in the Keswick articulation of
sanctification, a tension existed between the crisis and the progressive”
(“Wesleyan and Reformed Impulses in the Keswick and Pentecostal Movements,”
Peter Althouse.Pneuma Foundation).

[9]For a study of the question of whether Keswick critics
misrepresent the movement, or whether Keswick doctrine is itself contradictory
and unintelligible, see the chapter, “Do Keswick Critics Misunderstand Keswick
Theology?”

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